Wednesday, January 23, 2013

"Siemens Faced With Investor Ire at Annual Meeting" (SI)

Once upon a time we referred to Siemens as "General Electric's better-managed doppelgänger".
Then the stock went from $50 to $145 and we moved on. Yesterday it closed in New York at $112.40 up $1.43 and I'm wondering, what with President Obama's clean/green talk at his second inaugural, if it's worth another look.
From the WSJ Europe's The Source blog:

Top executives at SiemensSIE.XE-0.67%,
Germany’s flagship industrial group, faced harsh criticism of the
group’s strategy from investors at Wednesday’s annual general meeting in
Munich after reporting a fall in net profit in the three months to Dec. 31.

Institutional investors singled out over-ambitious revenue targets in
the past and poor execution of major projects as reasons for their
disquiet over the performance of Chief Executive Peter Loescher and his top managers.

“It doesn’t look like the board has intimate knowledge of what’s
going on in the operational units,” said Ingo Speich, portfolio manager
at Union Investment fund, Siemens’ eighth largest single investor with a
holding of roughly 1% of outstanding shares.

Mr. Speich cited the delay in delivering new high speed trains to
German railways as an example. “Mr. Loescher, what makes you so
confident, that execution of projects will improve in future?” Mr.
Speich asked Siemens’ chief executive, according to prepared remarks for
the annual meeting.

The fund manager blamed Siemens’ target to reach annual sales of 100
billion euros for exploding costs and eroding margins. In the fiscal
year to end-September 2012, the group’s net profit fell 27% to €4.46
billion despite a 6.9% rise in revenue to €78.3 billion....MORE